


A Bosom Friend

by yours_truly



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-I Want to Believe, wifegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 06:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5153660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yours_truly/pseuds/yours_truly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder instinctively knew that if he said anything it would ruin the moment; better to hold the quiet and make her listen to her own words, but he couldn’t help the small, knowing smile that crept over his face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bosom Friend

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> _It is not down on any map; true places never are. ~Moby-Dick_  
> 

“Reading your biography again, Mulder?”

 

He was reclined on the couch with his head under the lamp, and she must have glanced over at the page as she hung her jacket on the coat rack by the door. She gave him a peck on the lips before going to sit in the striped armchair by the radiator. He knew that was her reserved spot during the colder months, one of the only places in their somewhat drafty house that she really managed to feel warm.

 

“How was work?” he asked.

 

“Fine,” she said, trying and failing to smooth the winter static from her hair. “Why’d you get _Moby-Dick_ out?”

 

Should he…? No, it was too easy. “I had the idea of adding one of the extracts to my signature on one of the boards, but then I decided that was too pretentious even for me. And then I just got caught up in it, I guess. I forgot how funny Melville could be.”

 

Scully smirked. “Before everyone drowns, of course.”

 

There had been times in the past—sitting on a rock, or in a dilapidated motel—when she might have said this rather pointedly, but the obsessed captain’s fate didn’t seem as prescient these days as it once had, and Mulder was grateful that it was something they could tease about now.

 

“I don’t know, Scully, maybe this edition is from a parallel universe where Ahab and Starbuck settle down and buy a house in the country.”

 

She raised an eyebrow imperiously. “Well when you get there, tell me. I’d love to read about that in-between the shark massacre and the pirate chase.”

 

Mulder thumbed through the pages, not truly reading the words but touching the paper as if the story could seep into him via osmosis. He’d never told Scully that he only first read the book after her love for it became clear to him. Anything to gain even a small peek into the mind of his partner.

 

“Queequeg and Ishmael got married,” he said absently as he worried a tear on the worn cover.

 

“Oh, not really.”

 

Interesting. Tilting his head to the right so he could see Scully more clearly, he raised his own eyebrows, as if to let her know that incredulity was not the sovereign domain of her royal highness of skepticism. “How do you figure?”

 

“Well, come on," she said. "Queequeg was a pagan South Pacific Islander with a ‘tomahawk pipe’ who observed Ramadan. You can’t possibly take that ceremony seriously.”

 

Objecting to a little syncretism in a household full of Catholic saints, extra-terrestrials, ghosts, and cryptids struck Mulder as more than slightly hypocritical. “Why not?”

 

Sometimes Scully talked with her hands when she really wanted to make a point, and they began to fly around as if simultaneously brushing aside a ridiculous notion while also grounding the very heart of her argument. “Mulder, it was just a device meant to reinforce their friendship despite the circumstances it started under, nothing more. Melville used it to clarify the depth of their intimacy and trust in a world where–”

 

She broke off suddenly, and she and Mulder stared at one another. He sat up slowly and held the book closed between his knees, leaning on his elbows. He instinctively knew that if he said anything it would ruin the moment; better to hold the quiet and make her listen to her own words, but he couldn’t help the small, knowing smile that crept over his face. He couldn’t have planned this even if he had tried.

 

Scully blinked a few times and then pushed herself out of the armchair. She untucked her blouse from her pencil skirt with as much calm dignity as she could manage while she said, “Shut up, Mulder. I’m going to start dinner.”

 

His grin definitely couldn’t be helped at this point, but her back was to him now and it hardly seemed to matter. “Hey there, Professor, I didn’t say anything. Your American Lit lecture was doing just fine making my arguments for me.”

 

“I can’t hear you,” she sang out from the kitchen, and she intentionally rattled the pans above the stove so that they drowned out his laughter.

 

The _yes_ was getting closer, he could tell. Tonight wasn’t the time to try again, but someday soon he was going to ask, and she was going to agree, and he felt like he might owe the Herman Melville Historical Society a small donation in gratitude.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the tenth chapter of _Moby-Dick_.


End file.
